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Spyro The Dragon: Tampered Beta
Note: The pasta might seem a slight bit shorter than what I usually wrote in the past, but I tried to make it clear cut. Also, this is my first Creepypasta in half a year or so, so it won't be perfect. Spyro The Dragon, a game beloved by many gamers who started with the Play Station in the 90's. Many remember it by its zany graphics, its timeless enemies, and its main character. However, what no one knows is that there is a dark side to the story in the early games. The truth behind Spyro has never been told, or even heard of. Until now. I was a beta tester for Sony back in the late 90's. I got to try out all sorts of different games before they were even announced. Some were good, others were bad, and a good few were even creepy. One of which was the original beta prototype for Spyro The Dragon. When the staff met to discuss the ideas for the game, ideas were tossed left and right. Subjects such as the main character's design, the overall gameplay, and even the objectives were discussed in full detail. I won't lie, from what I had heard about the meeting, some of the ideas made me cringe. One idea was that Spyro's nemesis would be a murderous villain who decided that he wanted to rule the Dragon Realms. This idea consisted of Spyro witnessing his own race being put into extinction, and vowing to gain his revenge upon the enemy. This idea was withdrawn immediately, due to the graphic nature of the opening scene. One of the staff who denied this idea said that such a vivid and disturbing scene would not be tolerable for a kids game. In the end, the concept consisted of Spyro's nemesis, Gnasty Gnorc, turning the Elder Dragons to crystal and Spyro adventuring around to save them. With this, game production began. The game production went well, and after some months of work, the prototype was complete. I was notified that the beta tests would soon begin. It had been some time since I had tested a game, and I was more than ready. I scheduled my tests for that weekend and got myself ready. Soon after my scheduling, the prototype disc disappeared from the company. We knew it was someone within the company, so we figured that there was still something that needed done. After searching for hours on end, one of the designers came forward saying they found the disc outside. The designer said that it was his fault, as they forgot to completely zip up their bag as they were leaving and tripped over the sidewalk. This was not good, given that the discs used for beta testing were very fragile. When we inspected the backside of the disc to check for scratches, we only found one single scratch that looked like a smile. After I made a joke about the situation, we laughed it off and prepared for the testing. We inserted the disc in our PlayStation, and began playing. Something odd began to happen after the Sony Play Station logo disappeared, as the game began to produce static on the screen. Given what happened to the disc, this was to be expected, but it didn't stop. We reset the game and tried again. This time, the logo didn't appear and it went straight to the title screen. There was no music, but of course, given Steve Copeland was still finishing the tracks for the levels, it was also expected for this to happen. We decided to start a new game, but when the new/load screen popped up, we found a save file already on it. Normally, this wouldn't be a problem, as the designers test the game first and make sure there are no glitches. However, this game's save states would hold an image of the world you were on. When the screen came up, it was a static like image that looked like white noise on a TV screen. We looked questionably at this, and wondered what it was. With a slight bit of hesitation, we decided to reset the game and check the data by keeping the Play Station cover up. As I tried to reset the game, the screen filled with static again and wouldn't stop. One of the staff noticed an image within the static, and took a picture of it for investigating. It was becoming obvious that the disc was tampered with, and we had to figure out what else was wrong. As the staff member looked at the picture on the computer, the screen went back to normal and I decided to start from the static save to find out what was going on. As the game started, Spyro flew on the screen like the designers wanted. However, instead of “The adventure continues”, the screen read “Welcome to Purgatory”. This startled me somewhat, but I wasn't going to be deterred by a strange message. The game began and I was placed in Artisan's Home. A few moments after the game started, music began to play. Confused by this, I called Stewart Copeland to ask if he added music to the prototype disk. He told me that he had, but only to the home worlds. As the game volume was turned up, Stewart asked if the disk was working properly due to the skipping of the music. We told him that there was some issues getting the disk to start, to which he replied that there might be problems with the disc. After thanking him for his time, I continued playing. So far, it didn't look like there were any game play issues. This relieved me, until I decided to enter one of the portals. Given this was a prototype, all of the portals were accessible so I could test them. Stone Hill was my first stop. As I entered the area, the music started. However, this music wasn't the original piece that Stewart made, or at least didn't sound like it. The music sounded like a male chorus singing, which actually would not have been a bad choice of music, until the original piece for Stone Hill started playing. This piece sounded twisted and slightly sped up. This began to bug me, and I was starting to get suspicious about what was going on with the disc. I played through it, trying to collect everything as fast as possible. It was here that I decided to test what would happen if I touched one of the dragon statues. As I stepped on the pedestal, the dragon statue shook. I read the name of the dragon to see if it was not tampered with, and saw the words “Rescued Lindar”. What appeared wasn't a dragon, but a transparent silhouette of the original dragon's body. The shaky, eerie voice said “Thank you for releasing me”, unlike his original dialogue, where he would give a hint. I decided to immediately leave after rescuing the rest of the dragons, whom said the same thing and were depict the same way, and go try a different level. I chose to go to Toasty, the boss for the Artisan's Home. As it showed Spyro flying as planned, something went wrong. Spyro looked as if he hit one of those imaginary barriers that would be found in Stone Hill and began to fall into the scenery. The words “It is time for your voyage to end.” appeared on the screen. I fell into the level for Toasty, and immediately saw everything on fire. Asking the designer about this, he denied the fact that they did it. This bugged me, and I figured this would be a great chance to see what was done to the game. After a few more moments, a demonic, deep chant began to play as the music began. As the level continued, the chant grew louder and louder as I reached Toasty, the boss. What awaited me wasn't Toasty, but Gnasty Gnorc. I asked the designer if Gnasty was the boss in each boss stage, and he said no. This was definitely becoming troublesome. I decided that I would toast Gnasty and stop playing the game so we could be done with this. I stepped up and challenged Gnasty, who went into a one line monologue saying “Eternal Hell awaits you.” That was it, I had had enough, and started the fight. The fight did not go so well. Gnasty, instead of shooting the crystal rays, basically shot fire balls at Spyro. These were easily avoidable, but still didn't synch at all with his original design. I was able to get close enough to flame him, and hit him right on the mark. As he was flamed, his head began to catch fire as he began to run around in a cartoonish fashion. I found this somewhat humorous, until his head didn't lose the flame. He continued attacking, this time hitting me with waves of fire. Sparx lost a colour and the match continued. This time, his armour began to catch fire after being flamed. After the same running around, he stopped and began attacking, as if the fire wasn't bugging him. The next round began as he would run after Spyro and try to clobber him. I was able to get a hit in after losing another Colour on Sparx. This time, his entire body was on fire, and the skin disappeared until Gnasty became a skeleton. I breathed a sigh of relief, thinking it was finally over. I was dead wrong. The skeleton started to move and jumped. As it hit the ground, the area that Spyro and Gnasty stood on broke apart; being replaced by lava. This looked bad as Spyro had no other foot holds or platforms to fly to. With this, Gnasty aimed his crystal sceptre at Spyro and launched a blast towards him. Unable to move, I jumped to try to avoid the blast. It still hit Spyro and took him down to his last hit. This began a cinematic where it would show Spyro leaning down as if injured. The chanting returned, and even more slow and eerie. Gnasty laughed evilly and launched one more blast at Spyro, who was hit. This blast turned him into crystal like the other dragons. The blast was also powerful enough to knock Spyro's crystallized form into the lava. I watched in horror as he simply and slowly sank in and the screen went black. The game over screen didn't pop up. Instead, another static image placed itself upon the screen. It looked to be the same as the one that we took a picture of earlier, but a slight bit clearer. What we saw startled us. We saw Spyro in Hell, along with the rest of the dragons that we supposedly rescued. They all were skeletons and floating in the lava that surrounded them. The words “Game Over” appeared in creepy, slime-like letters over the image as an evil and loud laugh came through the speakers. We immediately turned off the game and looked at each other. We knew that there was no way that this was what was truly wanted for the game, prototype or not. When we brought this up at the next staff meeting, I pointed out each little detail and everything that happened to us. When we asked for any information regarding this issue, no one knew what to say. It is still undetermined who made this beta of the game, but one thing is for sure: No one else would ever see it for as long as we lived. Category:Creepypasta Category:Creepypastas Category:Legend of Spyro (series) Category:Video Game Category:Video Games Category:Original Story